Tuesday, February 02, 2010

The COEX Aquarium and a Flickr Pro Account

Chris in South Korea recommended a Flickr account for posting photos on blogs. I must say that the photos are displayed well, and it's very easy to use and link from. But unfortunately I've already used up my 200 photo limit, so after a bit of mulling around, I decided to get a US$25 pro account. Now I can upload unlimited photos for a year. The money was paid for by my awesome website sponsor, Korean Class 101, whose banner you can see on the right. So please click their link and learn lots of Korean from them.

When Hong was still here, we took him to the COEX aquarium, for lack of a more exciting idea. The COEX aquarium is a nice place, but I originally wanted to take him out to Namdaemun or somewhere more culturally relevant. But it was snowing, and Hong never minds what we do anyway. In such situations, laziness often wins.

If you've been following this blog for an unhealthy amount of time, you may remember that I already posted about this place. When I was a boy, I wanted to be a marine biologist.

And many other things as well.

Not much had really changed at COEX, except for this fish, which I hadn't seen before. I think some species of fast-river fish are best suited to a rapidly changing environment. Keeping them in an aquarium for a while would probably be bad for their mental health, and I'm sure that at least some of them have personality disorders by now. This one was just staring listlessly at the window, despite my efforts to stimulate it with entertaining facial expressions.

This is a two-headed turtle. Both heads were alive and functioning independently, so I guess it's a kind of siamese, or conjoined twin.

It must be interesting when they're trying to swim in different directions.

The aquarium now has two manatees, which are also known as sea cows. Manatees have a versatile upper lip which they use to gather food, much like an elephant's trunk. Manatees are among the least dangerous animals in the world, and their primary enemy is the boat propellor.

I recently heard that instead of aquariums, some people make 'mossariums'. That's when you have dirt and rocks inside, instead of fish and water. You gather some moss from any unscrupulous location nearby and put it inside. Apparently they require very little upkeep, you just have to sprinkle them with water once every few weeks and it nourishes itself from floating particles in the air.

After that we went to eat at one of our favourite Japanese bars in Gangnam, (I think it's called Dotomi) just next to exit 6. Here they sell warm sake in sandlewood boxes and nice food.

A good thing about hanging out with Heather is that she eats pretty much anything.

Even my cooking.

Lately we've made two new friends, Hyunju and Yulim. From left to right is Hyunju, Yulim, Heather, me and Hong. Yulim invited us to the MBC-Adidas marathon in a few weeks time, and unbeknownst to me, Heather had already signed us up. So I think some kind of fitness training is in order.

I've been using the slippery snow as an excuse not to go jogging these days. But that excuse is slowly melting away.

And to finish up this post is the fearless Hyunju, who appears to be biting a candle. She's a TOPIA teacher and is quite pleasant company. Yulim and Hyunju have different characters, but remarkably compatible personality types. It's something I ponder to great extent.

2 comments:

Lest any readers think your photos disappear from your account after you've uploaded 200 photos, they don't. If you upload pictures to another site (e.g. a blog) they will be seen for the rest of time, or until Flickr goes out of business. The 200 picture limit is simply what you're limited to see on the Flickr page. Since I personally never use that, it's no big deal :)